Did Ashcroft go too far in Greenpeace indictment?

Bergen Record ^ | Tuesday, November 4, 2003 | JONATHAN TURLEY

[dead]

IT HAS lain dormant in the darkest recesses of American law for 125 years, but last month Attorney General John Ashcroft introduced critics of the administration to his latest weapon in law enforcement.

In a Miami federal court, the attorney general charged the environmental group Greenpeace under an obscure 1872 law originally intended to end the practice of "sailor-mongering," or the luring of sailors with liquor and prostitutes from their ships. Ashcroft plucked the law from obscurity to punish Greenpeace for boarding a vessel near port in Miami.

[Alberta's Child]

Not only is the law being used to prosecute one of the administration's most vocal critics in an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment . . .

If criminal trespass is protected as "free speech" in this country, then I expect the Bergen Record to provide moral and financial support to the person who burns their office to the ground to protest their idiotic articles.

/sarcasm off/

[TexasCajun]

Screw Greenpeace. I'll take Ashcroft.

GreenPeace = EnviroTerrorist

[Darth Reagan]

The 1872 law is a legal relic that must have required much archeological digging through law books to find.

I found this pretty quickly, and it looks like it might be the applicable law -- easily found in the current printing of the U.S. Code:

18 U.S.C. 2194 - Shanghaiing sailors

Whoever, with intent that any person shall perform service or labor of any kind on board of any vessel engaged in trade and commerce among the several States or with foreign nations, or on board of any vessel of the United States engaged in navigating the high seas or any navigable water of the United States, procures or induces, or attempts to procure or induce, another, by force or threats or by representations which he knows or believes to be untrue, or while the person so procured or induced is intoxicated or under the influence of any drug, to go on board of any such vessel, or to sign or in anywise enter into any agreement to go on board of any such vessel to perform service or labor thereon; or

Whoever knowingly detains on board of any such vessel any person so procured or induced to go on board, or to enter into any agreement to go on board, by any means herein defined -

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both

It may be the one Ashcroft is using, and if so, it seems a stretch.

More importantly, can you say "Shanghaiing" anymore?

[TheBigB]

Don’t bitch when Hillary’s president and Andrew Cuomo’s the AG selectively enforcing sailor mongering laws on abortion protestors or the NRA.

Since neither of those will ever happen, I will have no opportunity to bitch. Thanks anyhoo.

[cyncooper]

So who clunked Jonathan Turley on the head and made him lose all reason?

He used to sound so sensible, despite his democrat affiliation.

Invading the boat physically goes beyond "free speech" and I am not alarmed that such action is being prosecuted.

[Prime Choice]

Don’t bitch when Hillary’s president and Andrew Cuomo’s the AG selectively enforcing sailor mongering laws on abortion protestors or the NRA.

Y'mean like Janet Reno did under Clinton?

[Abe Froman]

I fail to see why they are't being charged with piracy.

I won't shed a tear to see Greenpeace lose their tax-exempt status. Perhaps if the American Left gets a taste of tyranny they'll find the Right's objections to their interpretation of select Constitutional Amendments out of existence more relevant.

[TexasCajun]

Don’t bitch when Hillary’s president and Andrew Cuomo’s the AG selectively enforcing sailor mongering laws on abortion protestors or the NRA.

Please, don't even joke about that, I'll have nightmares.

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

Good for Ashcroft!Any means at all to nail enviro-wackos is fine with me.

[Prime Choice]

Hmmm...GreenPEACE...Religion of PEACE...hmmmm...

There's a satire just waiting to happen here somewhere...hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[EUPHORIC]

"Greenpeace is annoying, but Ashcroft is dangerous."

That kind of "dangerous" we need MORE of. I'd love to see GreenPeace litigated out of existence the same way they and other left wing focus groups such as PETA routinely do to those they target.

At least this AG is closer to the correct targets then Reno and her crusade against a Bible study group that happened to have guns on the premises and an evil "white separtist" who just wanted to live in the backwoods and be left alone.

[bert]

He is after the bad guys. The court will decide if the old anciend etc law is the law. The court will decide if GreenPeace broke it.

Death by small cuts is the way to bleed them to death.

[dead]

If criminal trespass is protected as "free speech" in this country, then I expect the Bergen Record to provide moral and financial support to the person who burns their office to the ground to protest their idiotic articles.

Can you even read?

They plead guilty to misdemeanor trespass charges and were released (I assume they paid a fine).

Fifteen months later, Ashcroft bought “sailor mongering” charges against their organization. If you can think of some reason that isn’t political for his actions, please share.

And they didn’t burn anything down, so I have no idea why you brought that up.

[sergeantdave]

Poor Greenpeace, those jolly pranksters sailing about the ocean wide. Here's what they are -



Gerard Jackson
Melbourne: Australia
BrookesNews.Com
Thursday 20 March 2003


Much as Greenpeace has tried to cover up, with the help of sympathetic journalists, its Soviet links, it is a matter of public record that during the 1980s the Soviets helped Greenpeace raise funds in return for which it helped the Soviets plan propaganda campaigns.

During the 80s the Soviets helped Greenpeace raise funds, while the environmentalist group helps formulate Soviet propaganda. It appears, however, that cooperation did not stop with just aiding the Soviet propaganda onslaught against the West.

Greenpeace made Fernando Pereira it official photographer. But Pereira had been and important member of the Stasi-backed Baader-Meinhof gang, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group. The Dutch Communist Party later made him editor of its paper Der Waarheld. Eventually he was arrest by Dutch intelligence as a Soviet agent.

(The view that Greenpeace is evidently not bothered by certain brands of terrorism was given additional weight when it not only supported the eco-terrorist group Earth First but its cofounder Michael Roselle payroll).

Pereira was brought to Greenpeace by the World Peace Council, another Soviet front whose chairman, Chandra Romesh, was a Soviet agent.

So what was Greenpeace doing hiring a Soviet agent who had been an active member of a terrorist organisation? Well, do not bother asking, because Greenpeace ain't saying. But in case anyone thinks an innocent Greenpeace had been taken for a ride by cunning Soviet agents I should direct to attention to those KGB dregs that Greenpeace is still knowingly collaborating with.

William Arkin is the director of the Nuclear Information unit at Greenpeace. He was also a member of the Marxist-Leninist Washington-based IPS (Institute of Policy Studies). The IPS is notorious for having supported every communist regime that ever existed, including every leftwing terrorist organisation I can think of. It was so brazen in its support of the Soviets it even allowed KGB operatives to work in its Washington Office.

Brian Crozier (a highly respected commentator on intelligence matters and a fellow of the prestigious Institute for the Study of Conflict) summed up the real role of the IPS when he wrote:

"The IPS is the perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were too originate openly from the KGB."

Another Greenpeace collaborator is the National Lawyers Guild. This Marxist-Leninist front for the Soviets was set up in 1936 by a caucus of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) which was helped at the time by the International Labor Defence, which in turn was an agency of the Comintern (Communist International).

Greenpeace is also in bed with the CCR (Centre for Constitutional Rights) which was co-founded by pro-Soviet lawyers William Kuntsler and Arthur Kinoy. This pair never saw a communist totalitarian state they did not like. Michael Ratner is the organisation's current president and a notorious fellow traveller who blames the US — you guessed it — for terrorism.

The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy is another longstanding friend of the water melons (green on the outside, red on the inside) that run Greenpeace. The IPS was instrumental in setting up SANE to oppose resistance to Soviet aggression. To make this organisation's pro-Soviet activities more effective Greenpeace helped it build a computer network to coordinate its anti-American activities.

---

If you want more, I can also post Greenpeace's racist connections.

[donozark]

Turley is the same lawyer who accused AG Ashcroft of building "internment camps."

[dead]

Y'mean like Janet Reno did under Clinton?

Exactly. And I remember the dingbats on the left who cheered the abuse of power because it favored their political agenda.

[Darth Reagan]

18 U.S.C. 1651. - Piracy under law of nations

Whoever, on the high seas, commits the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations, and is afterwards brought into or found in the United States, shall be imprisoned for life

18 U.S.C. 1652. - Citizens as pirates

Whoever, being a citizen of the United States, commits any murder or robbery, or any act of hostility against the United States, or against any citizen thereof, on the high seas, under color of any commission from any foreign prince, or state, or on pretense of authority from any person, is a pirate, and shall be imprisoned for life

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[George Smiley]

Hillary Clinton is far more inimical to freedom than a whole deck full of Ashcrofts.

[antiRepublicrat]

I don't know much about maritime law, but if people board your boat without permission, aren't you allowed to shoot them?